National Archives Inspector General Said Hillary’s Private Email Server Was A Concern

Buzzfeed obtained a series of e-mails from the Inspector General (IG) of the National Archives (NARA) where he voices surprise and concern about Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email and server just days before the e-mail scandal broke in the NY Times. It’s the National Archives that keeps all the employee emails for the federal government, so the IG should have known about the e-mail server because technically Hillary’s emails were his to keep.

The internal emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show Gary Stern, the general counsel at NARA, expressing some concern and surprise after a phone conversation with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, who broke the story. That conversation took place in March, months after Clinton’s staff sent email records to the State Department.

“When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she apparently used a personal email account to conduct government business,” Stern writes to colleagues about the exchange with Schmidt. In the internal emails, Stern relays his conversation with Schmidt to other NARA officials, writing that “if true,” Clinton’s email use “would present a concern.”

Stern also serves as NARA’s chief Freedom of Information Act officer, senior agency official for privacy, and dispute resolution specialist, according to his biography.

Below is the relevant part of Stern’s email:

What does this revelation mean? On one level it means that Hillary Clinton was not transparent about her e-mails even within the confines of the Obama administration. It also means that the Clinton e-mail scandal is not going away anytime soon.

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